


The Sea

by elle_stone



Series: Halloween Fright Fest 2018 [5]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Halloween, Sea Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 01:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16466537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: When they meet, Lincoln is still a warrior. Luna takes the mask from his face, traces the curves of his nose and his eyebrows with her fingertips. She sees right through the warpaint because, she says, she used to wear it, too. But it's not who you are, she says.Lincoln's eyes close. He has needed to hear those words for a long time.Lincoln follows Luna to their new home on the sea. But on the oil rig at night, strange sounds can be heard from the water.(See end notes for spoiler-y warnings.)





	The Sea

Because he loves her, he follows her to the sea.

*  

When they meet, Lincoln is still a warrior. Luna takes the mask from his face, traces the curves of his nose and his eyebrows with her fingertips. She sees right through the warpaint because, she says, she used to wear it, too. _But it's not who you are_ , she says. 

Lincoln's eyes close. He has needed to hear those words for a long time. 

They lie out on the ground in a clearing in the woods, moss and dirt beneath them, a break in the trees showing the sky and the stars above. He does not say it yet but he's thinking, _This is who I really am. Part of the Earth, staring up, infinity above_.  

They compare kill marks: he's torn his into his leg, hers are burned along her back. She cannot see them but if she reaches over her shoulder, she can run her fingers across the scars. He watches her. He recognizes the fluid pattern of her touch, that same gentle run of her fingertips against flesh, this time her own. He kisses the scars and then the back of her neck and then down the curve of her spine. 

"Wouldn't you like to travel among the stars?" he asks. Luna's head is on his stomach and his hand is curled around her hip. She does not answer for a long while. Lincoln has dreamed of space for almost his whole life, for much longer than he's known how to wound and to kill, for so long that the desire has burrowed into him, re-defined him from the core. A man who wants to reach the boundaries of the world, then break them. 

He does not tell her the story of the man who fell from the sky, or ask if she's heard the rumors, the ones he knows are true: that people still live there, in a space ship so far away it cannot be seen from the ground, orbiting the Earth, watching the Earth from above. 

"Why the stars?" Luna asks. 

_Why not the stars?_ he considers but that isn't true. That's not his reason. 

"Space is the greatest mystery we have," he says, instead. 

He is attuned to every careful movement of her limbs, every shift of her body, every heartbeat, every breath. He feels her shaking her head, then the slow sweep of her arm across his chest and the languid lift of her body up, so she can turn to him, look at him. 

"We have mysteries you could not imagine," she says, "on the Earth. Beneath the Earth. In the sea." 

* 

Lincoln packs his bags and leaves most of his weapons behind; he takes only what he needs to hunt: to survive, as he always has, off the Earth. They set off at dusk. He says goodbye to no one. 

As they walk, Luna tells him stories of the sea: a body so vast that it seems to stretch to the world's end, a body so deep that its depths have never been explored. Not even by the old inhabitants of the Earth. Not even by those who knew so much, they engineered their own destruction; not even by those who, the legends say, took themselves into the stars. Stand on the edge of the shore and the waves will wash over your feet and your legs and drag at you, the water calling to you. Swirling and rushing over your skin. A force that cannot be controlled. 

Her voice sounds as gentle as the trill of river water over stones, but her words seem almost a warning, and Lincoln feels a shiver pass over his skin. 

 * 

The sea is as deep, Luna tells him, as the sky is tall. Lincoln would like to argue. But when he looks over the side of the boat, into the deep blue of the waves (blue upon blue, crystalline and clear and turquoise and teal, a blue whose depths he can only begin to perceive and whose end is so far beneath him it may be the center of the Earth itself) he finds he cannot answer, and instead, he holds himself quiet and still. Luna's fingers crawl like spiders up his back, over his shoulder, teasing little fingertip footsteps: she comes alive in the sea. She is playful and happy in the sea. 

They make their home on an old oil rig. The shore is a distant line on the horizon; within a few days, its people have all but faded from his memory. They are a long ago life, and now he is at peace. Luna hums songs he's never heard, and they dance against the backdrop of the sunset: the sky awash in color, the ocean dark, all but black, tipped with crystal light where the last of the sun's rays shine upon the waves. 

The lower levels of the rig are dark and prone to echoes. It takes him longer than he'd like, to get used to the clang of his own footsteps, to stop hearing noises he does not understand in the night. Luna falls asleep easily, her arm around him, her nose against his neck. He stares up at the ceiling and wonders how he got here, and even the boat ride (blue upon blue and the rocking of the waves beneath of them) seems almost, now, a dream. He opens and closes his eyes but there is only blackness. From down here he cannot see the stars. 

*  

One night, Lincoln wakes and finds himself alone. His eyes are ill-suited to the pitch black all around him, and he stumbles to light the candles they keep by their bed. He thinks he hears metallic echoes, deep but empty bangs and tremors of sound from the far corners of the rig, but he's not sure. His fingers shake. He can't remember the last time he did not know where Luna was. Something cold seems to be crawling up his skin. 

He finds her on the upper level, standing by the edge of the platform and looking down. The full moon and a sky full of uncountable stars light up her silhouette. He blows the candle out again, and sets it down, and does not approach. She does not seem to hear him. Her hair flows over her shoulders and down her back, and as he watches she stretches up onto her toes, the soles of her bare feet flashing into view, and leans farther over the edge, and for a moment he is sure she will tip right over, fall into the water, and drown. 

He takes a step forward, but his muscles are so stiff that they are aching, and he fears that if he came any closer, he would only be sealing her fate. 

He can hear a splashing sound coming from the water. Something moving, out of sight, down in the depths of the ocean. Something visiting the surface of the sea.  

* 

Sometimes they take the boat back to shore to replenish their supplies. Luna gathers nuts and berries to go with the fish she catches for them from the ocean. Lincoln hunts, though Luna rarely eats meat anymore, and trades most of what he catches at the nearest depot, where he walks by himself because Luna will not stray that far from the coast. Eventually, she refuses to leave the boat at all. He watches her from the treeline, skimming her fingers across the surface of the water, entranced by her reflection, perhaps, or by something she sees there deep in the shimmering blue waters of the sea. 

She does not want to return directly to the rig, but to row them in wide circles, taking this indirect route home because, she says, the water is so beautiful, and the sea is so calming, and she is never quite as close to it as she is now, or as she would like to be. Because, she says, this is perfect: the two of them alone in their little boat, carried along on the water by the gentlest of waves. The idea seems to soothe her. Her eyes are deep-sea blue and gentle and kind. The instability of the water beneath them lulls Lincoln nearly to sleep, and he finds himself drifting, warm and languid beneath the afternoon sun. 

* 

When he closes his eyes, he feels the breeze off the water, cold and brisk with a coming storm. He feels the patterns of the sun, shifting, hidden by clouds. He feels her fingertips light against his cheek, her kiss, teasing, along the line of his jaw.  

From the far distance, a low rumble of thunder sounds. 

He slides his hands around her waist and pulls her closer, his fingers grasping at her, and she so light against him, whispering words to him he does not understand, low easy rhythms of words. The thunder, louder now, and a pattern of rain, falling on the deck around them, tiny drops on his skin. This is the start of a storm. He feels it growing, feels it uncoiling from within him. He tries to lead her back to the lower levels again, away from the rain, but she tugs back at him, pulls him out into the open, and he does not fight. 

"It's just water," he understands now, as her teeth graze at the spot of skin behind his ear. "Just a little water... Feel it?" 

_Feel the storm coming…?_

"You don't like it down there anyway," she says. "Down inside the ship where it's dark... Stay outside with me... Come here..." 

She's walking him backwards, all the way to the edge of the deck again. She pulls herself up onto the ledge, balanced there above the water—his heart booms too loud and too big in his chest and he can't move. What if she were to fall—? But she's laughing. He's standing between her legs, her fingers tracing over his ears, down along his cheek: teasing again, calling him again. He grabs on to her waist, her thighs. He bites at her neck. He hears himself growling, unintelligible and low, as he licks the rainwater from her skin. 

She is still laughing. 

The rig seems to rock and sway beneath them, and Luna rides the wave of it, and he holds on to her tight. Something is hitting the side of the platform. Something slick and wet is thrashing against it, down below, in the water. Lincoln hears it, but only from a distance: another life calling to him, siren sounds through the storm. 

When he kisses her, she tastes of saltwater, and for a moment he understands her, he is fluent in the language of the sea. 

 * 

Soon, they start sleeping on the top level of the rig, beneath the stars again, which feels like home. He stills hears, he thinks, the clanging and the low metallic rumbles, the sounds he cannot name. But there are others, too. 

Low whispers, night laughter.  

The splash of water below them. 

Disturbances in the waves. 

 * 

Luna tells him that she will not return with him to the shore, not even for a day, or a few hours. "Not even our home is my home anymore," she tells him, sadly, as his fingers trace patterns along her shoulder and down across her collarbone. She watches them, but her gaze is distant. 

"I think they're calling me," she says, "to my new home." 

He doesn't ask who they are. He can hear them, still, waking up as the sun starts to go down. 

 * 

One morning, he wakes up early, in the hazy gray light of pre-dawn, and she is missing. His chest feels hollow. His skin is cold and sweat-slick, and when he swallows, there's an ugly dry scratch to his throat. He stands up and walks to the edge of the deck and looks down into the water: deep blue today and unsettled. As uneasy as he feels.  

He looks for the shore, but he can't see it from this distance.  

He could take the boat and row himself back to the coast. It's possible. But even the idea twists his stomach up in knots. Instead, he looks again into the water. He listens to the ocean. He listens for the echoes of the words she used to whisper to him, again and again in little trills and melodies, even when he first met her in the forest, even then. 

And then, because he loves her, he follows her into the sea. 

**Author's Note:**

> Depending on how you interpret the ending: warning for character death/suicide.
> 
> (In my reading, Lincoln does not die in the end, but becomes the same sea creature that Luna was/has become. But it turned out a bit more ambiguous than I'd intended.)
> 
> This story has an accompanying moodboard [on my tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/179572303560/the-sea-lincolnluna-2100-words-coming-halloween).
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
